The stories in The Fire Doll investigate the notion that our experience can be richer, more inclusive, and sometimes more unsettling than the life prescribed by the normal daylight sense of reality. American writing has often been engaged with elements of mystery and the uncanny, and the American Dream has always had its corresponding nightmare. These stories feature haunted landscapes, places where violence and tragedy have left their marks: a man is subsumed by his vision of falling pine straw, a camera captures something the eye alone can't perceive, and a dead girl leads an...